António Guterres։ The war needs to stop ... and I believe that it is in the hands of the U.S. to make it stop

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday there are “reasonable grounds” to believe both sides in the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran may have committed war crimes, as attacks and retaliatory strikes on energy facilities intensify.

Speaking exclusively to POLITICO on a visit to Brussels before Thursday's European Council summit, Guterres said: “If there are attacks either on Iran or from Iran on energy infrastructure, I think that there are reasonable grounds to think that they might constitute a war crime.”

Israel attacked Iran's South Pars natural gas field on Wednesday, then Tehran launched a retaliatory strike on a major energy complex in Qatar. Beyond that, Guterres said the growing civilian casualties left both sides in the conflict open to possible war crimes charges.

“I don't see any difference. It doesn't matter who targets civilians. It is totally unacceptable,” he said.

Representatives for the U.S. and Israeli governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Guterres' remarks. America and Israel began a bombing campaign on Feb. 28, killing Iran's supreme leader and sparking ongoing retaliatory missile-and-drone attacks from Tehran on sites across the Middle East.

Having called for deescalation in the region, Guterres appeared to blame Israel for driving the conflict forward, and called on U.S. President Donald Trump to persuade Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to bring it to an end.

“The war needs to stop ... and I believe that it is in the hands of the U.S. to make it stop. It is possible [to end the war], but it depends on the political will to do it,” Guterres told host Anne McElvoy for an episode of the EU Confidential podcast publishing Friday morning.

“I am convinced that Israel, as a strategy, wants to achieve a total destruction of the military capacity of Iran and regime change. And I believe Iran has a strategy, which is to resist for as much time as possible and to cause as much harm as possible. So the key to solve the problem is that the U.S. decides to claim that they have done their job.

“President Trump will be able to convince ... those that need to be convinced that the work is done. That the work can end,” Guterres added.